Go code spelunking with me in the all new Basecamp! You’ll see how we build Rails apps at 37signals and learn several exciting Ruby and JavaScript patterns that you can use. There’s also a writeup of some of the best chunks from the talk to check out.

Genius! This video is awesome. I love your work and will continue to basecamp to help our company succeed.

Francis

on 16 Jul 12

@Matt

” Love to see the masters at work…”

I can’t recall ever witnessing someone so unsure of himself speaking in my life.

His complete lack of confidence made me stop watching the video just minutes in.

Seth Robinson

on 16 Jul 12

@37signals

Even though you marked Francis’ comment above as trolling, he has a point.

There were far way to many times in the video when Nick from 37signals would say things like “I don’t even know what I’m doing at times” or “QueenBee (billing) gets a some testing” that it frankly paints a picture that 37signals as an organization is both dis functional and not professional in how you handle customer data.

DHH

on 17 Jul 12

Seth, the picture I got from Nick’s talk was one of honesty. Every organization will put its programmers in situations where they don’t feel like they know what they are doing (but doing none the less teaches them how). I have that feeling frequently when dealing with new problems or technology. The first step of learning is to admit your own ignorance and then work to erase it.

Second, if you’re not familiar with the colloquial tone used by programmers to talk to each other at programming conferences, I can see how you might misinterpret all of this as lack of professionalism or attribute it to dysfunctional behavior. But that would be a very shallow assessment based only on cherry-picked gut reactions and ignoring things like Nick’s description of our multilayered testing setup.

If you are interested in learning more about the tone programmers strike at these conferences and to put it into a larger perspective, then the same organization that captured Nick’s talk has many more, including one of mine. I warn you though, there is a lot more honesty, funny pictures, and inside jokes where that came from.